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RFE/RL Newsline, Vol. 1, No. 185, 97-12-23Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Newsline Directory - Previous Article - Next ArticleFrom: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty <http://www.rferl.org>RFE/RL NEWSLINEVol. 1, No. 185, 23 December 1997CONTENTS[A] TRANSCAUCASUS AND CENTRAL ASIA
[B] SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE
[C] END NOTE
[A] TRANSCAUCASUS AND CENTRAL ASIA[01] ARMENIA PLEASED BY OSCE COPENHAGEN MEETINGFirst deputy foreign minister Vardan Oskanian told a press conference 22 December that Yerevan was pleased that the meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe had not produced any new documents on the Karabakh issue, Interfax reported. He said that progress in talks about the disputed area had been stalled following the Lisbon OSCE summit at which a statement critical of Armenia was adopted. And, consequently, the absence of any new statement or even a reassertion of the old meant that more progress could be made, Oskanian suggested. PG[02] ARMENIA, RUSSIA FORM JOINT GAS COMPANYArmenian President Levon Ter-Petrosian told the founding conference of the Armrosgazprom gas company on 22 December that this joint enterprise reflected the strategic partnership of the two countries on a variety of issues, Interfax reported. He expressed the hope that this company would eventually be able to expand its activities throughout the Caucasus. PG[03] GEORGIAN PRESIDENT PLEASED BY ABKHAZ MEETINGIn his weekly radio address on 22 December, President Eduard Shevardnadze said that a Georgian-Abkhaz meeting held in Sukhumi last week was "extremely important" and "an undoubted step forward" toward peace, Interfax reported. Shevardnadze said that he had received a letter from U.S. President Bill Clinton guaranteeing American help in settling the conflict and overcoming the destruction it has wrought. In other comments, the Georgian leader defended his decision to lift diplomatic immunity for Gueorgui Makharadze, a Georgian diplomat sentenced to seven years in prison in the United States after an automobile he was driving killed a pedestrian in Washington. Shevardnadze said no Georgian court would have given a lesser sentence. PG[04] GEORGIA SEEKS TRANSFER OF RUSSIAN MILITARY FACILITIESGeorgian Defense Minister Vardiko Nadibaidze said on 22 December that Tbilisi is asking that Russia transfer to the Georgian military some 50 military facilities on Georgian territory, Interfax reported. Nadibaidze said his Russian counterpart Igor Sergeyev had suggested Moscow might be willing to do so if the Georgian parliament ratifies an agreement allowing for Russian basing in Georgia. PG[05] CHERNOMYRDIN IN UZBEKISTANRussian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin arrived in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, on 22 December, according to ITAR-TASS and Interfax. Chernomyrdin and Uzbek President Islam Karimov signed six agreements, including pacts on peaceful use of nuclear power, protection of investments and means of counter-acting illegal financial operations. The two denied relations between their countries had worsened, noting that bilateral trade this year has surpassed last year's figures. Chernomyrdin also expressed satisfaction with the treatment of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in Uzbekistan. Chernomyrdin said his visit to Tashkent serves as a good basis for next year's planned visit by Boris Yeltsin to Uzbekistan. BP[06] CORRUPTION IN KYRGYZSTANKyrgyzstan's Procurator General Asanbek Sharshenaliev said at a 22 December press conference in Bishkek that 144 government officials at various levels, including ten in the parliament, are guilty of some economic crime, RFE/RL correspondents reported. Sharshenaliev also reported that the more than 10, 000 economic crimes registered in Kyrgyzstan over the last 3 1/2 years had cost the country about $70 million. He said the legal system had recovered about 44 percent of the money. BP[07] KYRGYZSTAN SEES WAHHABIS AS THREATKyrgyzstan's Security Minister Feliks Kulov said on 22 December that the government is alarmed by "the activities of extremist religious groups" in the country's southern regions, according to ITAR-TASS. Kulov said the Kyrgyz government is particularly concerned about Wahhabi sects in light of recent events in neighboring Uzbekistan's city of Namangan (See "Newsline" 22 December) . Kulov announced that a special government commission will soon be formed to "keep under control" the growth and activities of these extreme groups. BP[B] SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE[08] CLINTON PUTS PRESSURE ON BOSNIAN LEADERS...U.S. President Bill Clinton stressed in his individual meetings with the three members of the joint presidency in Sarajevo on 22 December that they must do more to implement the Dayton agreement and rebuild their country (see "RFE/RL Newsline, 22 December 1997). He made similar points before a larger audience made up of Bosnia's political and cultural elite. Momcilo Krajisnik, the Serbian member of the joint presidency, met Clinton privately in the morning but boycotted the larger session. Republika Srpska President Biljana Plavsic told Clinton that building peace will take time. She stressed that prosperity is the key to peace. PM[09] ...AND VISITS TROOPSClinton went on to Tuzla on 22 December and addressed some of the 8,000 U.S. soldiers stationed in Bosnia. The president, who recently announced that the U.S. will maintain a military presence in Bosnia after SFOR's mandate expires in June, said: "In spite of all you have done, I think it is imperative that we not stop until the peace here has a life of its own, until it can endure without us. We have worked too hard to let this go." (See "RFE/RL Newsline," 19 December 1997). Clinton, who was accompanied by former Republican presidential candidate, former Senator Bob Dole, thanked Congress for supporting his policies in Bosnia. PM[10] GERMANY'S KOHL STRESSES PEACEKEEPINGBosnian joint presidency Chairman Alija Izetbegovic and Foreign Minister Jadranko Prlic met Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Defense Minister Volker Ruehe when the German visitors arrived at Sarajevo airport on 23 December. Kohl and Ruehe plan to meet with each of the three members of the joint presidency, as well as with Bosnian political and religious leaders. The main purpose of his trip, however, is to talk for several hours with some of the 2,700 German peacekeepers stationed around Sarajevo. The "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" wrote that Kohl wants to use his last trip abroad of 1997 to underscore the German army's role in international peacekeeping. PM[11] CANADA TO HELP WAR CRIMES WITNESSESA Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said in Ottawa on 22 December that Canada is negotiating with the Hague-based war crimes tribunal about enabling witnesses to emigrate to Canada under special, favorable conditions. The program is designed to encourage witnesses to speak out by offering them a new home away from possible threats of retaliation in the former Yugoslavia, the Vienna daily "Die Presse" reported. PM[12] MILOSEVIC DECLARES MILUTINOVIC SERBIAN PRESIDENT...Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic announced in Belgrade on 22 December that his own candidate, Milan Milutinovic, won the Serbian presidential election the previous day, an RFE/RL correspondent reported from the Serbian capital (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 22 December 1997). Serbian Election Commission officials said that Milutinovic took 58.66 percent of the vote, as against 38.14 percent for his challenger, Vojislav Seselj of the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS). The commission also stated that 50.53 percent of registered voters turned out to cast their ballots, thereby making the vote valid. PM[13] ...WHILE SESELJ CLAIMS FRAUDDragan Todorovic, the SRS campaign chairman, said in Belgrade on 22 December that the real turnout had been only 49.33 percent, which would make the vote invalid. He said that the SRS will demand that the government set up a special commission to investigate possible election fraud. Todorovic charged that there were widespread irregularities at some polling stations in Kosovo, where the ethnic Albanian majority boycotted the elections. Spokesmen for Serbian opposition leader Zoran Djindjic told the Vienna daily "Die Presse" of 23 December that Djindjic and his supporters feared electoral fraud all along and hence boycotted the campaign and the vote. PM[14] OSCE SLAMS SERBIAN VOTE...Representatives of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said in Belgrade on 22 December that Serbian authorities had failed to implement OSCE recommendations for improving the electoral process. The OSCE officials noted that some polling stations in Kosovo that did not open eventually reported a voter turnout of 100 percent. PM[15] ...BUT ALBANIA, RUSSIA PRAISE ITAlbanian Foreign Minister Paskal Milo said on state-run television in Tirana on 22 December that Milutinovic's election shows that Serbia has distanced itself from its "warmongering policies of the past," Belgrade's BETA news agency reported. Milo added that regional stability will depend on Serbia's respecting "the legitimate rights of the Kosovars" and observing agreements it has concluded regarding Kosovo. Milo said that Milutinovic's election shows that Serbia is "serious" about meeting its obligations. And in Moscow, the Russian news agency Interfax reported that an unnamed Foreign Ministry source hailed Milutinovic's election as a victory for a "sober-minded approach to the difficult problems the republic faces." The source added that a Radical victory "could have had the most unpredictable consequences both for Serbia itself and for the region as a whole." PM[16] MORE BOMBS IN VUKOVARA Serbian Orthodox church building was slightly damaged and a UN policeman wounded in separate hand grenade attacks in Vukovar on 22 December. Croatian police said they are holding seven people in connection with the attacks, an RFE/RL correspondent reported from Zagreb. The grenade attacks are the latest in a series of incidents in the runup to 15 January, when eastern Slavonia returns to full Croatian sovereignty. The last Serb-held enclave in Croatia is currently under a temporary UN administration, although elements of Croatian rule have been gradually reintroduced under the terms of the 1995 Erdut agreement between Serbia and Croatia. PM[17] CROATIAN MEDIA TRIAL ADJOURNEDA Zagreb judge on 22 December adjourned a trial of two independent journalists charged with slandering President Franjo Tudjman (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 22 December 1997). The judge said that he needs more historical background information to decide whether the journalists' comparison of certain of Tudjman's policies to those of the late Spanish dictator Gen. Francisco Franco was indeed slanderous. PM[18] ALBANIAN JUDGES STAGE HUNGER STRIKETwelve Albanian judges, who were trained in six months courses in 1993 staged a hunger strike in Tirana's district court on 22 December. Police broke up the protest. They were protesting against a law that requires judges and prosecutors to hold university degrees. The law would disqualify over 400 prosecutors and judges who went through the controversial courses. Justice Minister Thimio Kondi told VOA's Albanian service on 23 December that the strike was illegal and the protests politically motivated. Most of the students of the courses were hand selected by the then governing Democratic Party. Former President Sali Berisha, meanwhile, accused the government of "attacking the independence of the courts." FS[19] ALBANIAN COMMUNIST-ERA PRESIDENT RETURNS HOMERamiz Alia, Albania's last communist president returned to Tirana on 22 December, border officials at the airport told "Koha Jone." The 72 year old Alia fled from jail in March, during a popular revolt in which prisons were opened. He took refuge to France and Sweden. Alia, two former interior ministers and a chief prosecutor were acquitted in October of killing 58 people who tried to flee the country between 1990 and 1992. The Supreme Court earlier ruled that 32 other communists officials could not be sentenced for acts that were not considered a crime at the time. FS[20] ALBANIAN DEMOCRATS BOYCOTT CONSTITUTIONAL COMMISSIONThe Democratic Party refused to participate in a meeting of a parliament commission that is preparing a constitution, ATSH reported. All political parties were invited to the meeting on 22 December in Tirana. The Council of Europe had urged the Democrats to participate in the drafting process in order to achieve a broad political consensus over the new constitution. FS[21] ROMANIAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATS BOYCOTT PARLIAMENT'S SESSIONEx-president Ion Iliescu's Social Democratic Party (PDSR), boycotted a special parliamentary session on 22 December, commemorating the Romanian revolution. Iliescu argued with prosecutors' plans to question him over his role during the 1989 uprising which brought his party to power. Prosecutors are also investigating post-communist defense and interior ministers Victor Stanculescu and Mihai Chitac over their role as army generals in the shooting of 72 demonstrators in Timisoara. More than 1,000 people were killed throughout the country during the revolt. Iliescu's successor, Emil Constantinescu, pledged to reveal the truth about the role of the communist secret service in the events. FS[22] ROMANIAN PRESIDENT CALLS FOR RESIGNATION OF FOREIGN MINISTEREmil Constantinescu on 22 December said that Foreign Minister Adrian Severin should resign. He made the remarks after two intelligence agencies reported to the Supreme Defense Council that they found no evidence supporting allegations by Severin that several party leaders and newspaper editors were foreign agents. Severin's allegations had sparked rows within the government coalition three months ago. At the time Constantinescu tried to defuse the conflict by ordering an investigation into the matter. Prime Minister Victor Ciorbea also said that he would ask the foreign minister to resign should his allegations prove false. FS[C] END NOTE[23] Migration Among CIS States Large and Variable in 1990sby Michael Wyzan*The turmoil that accompanied the break-up of the Soviet Union has set large numbers of people in motion.. CIS Migration Report 1996, published recently by the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration (IOM), contains detailed information on these flows from 1989 to 1996. The biggest flows have involved Russians returning to Russia from other republics, with similar movements among the other 14 ethnic groups also reaching significant levels. Another important motivation for migrants has been a desire to leave republics troubled by civil strife (especially Armenia, Georgia, and Tajikistan) to find work, generally in Russia. Peoples deported by Stalin have migrated, returning to their original homelands (e.g., Crimean Tatars), moving somewhere else in the CIS (e.g., Meskhetians deported to Central Asia settling in Azerbaijan), or outside the CIS altogether (e.g., Volga Germans leaving Kazakhstan for Germany). Ecological and other disasters -have also produced large migratory flows. The most important of these are the 1986 accident at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (affecting Ukraine, Belarus, and parts of Russia), the shrinkage of the Aral Sea (in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan), the problems around the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site area (in Kazakhstan), and earthquakes in northern Armenia in 1988. The IOM study estimates that there have been 739,000 ecological migrants since the mid-1980s. In Armenia and Azerbaijan, large fractions of the population have become refugees or internally displaced persons as a result of the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh and related events. The Abkhaz conflict has created similar problems within Georgia. Finally, recent years have seen a flood of illegal migrants -- and smaller numbers of refugees and asylum seekers -- from Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East to Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova, usually with hopes of finding their way legally or otherwise into Western Europe. The IOM reports that there are between 500, 000 and a million illegal migrants in Russia alone. The figures on migratory trends in Russia mirror major socioeconomic developments there. The net balance of immigrants and emigrants rose steadily from 104,906 in 1991 to 914,597 in 1994, before subsiding again to 355,384 in 1996. During the 1980s, immigration to Russia consisted of both repatriation of Russians and inflows of other titular nationalities. Over the period 1990-96, some 2.4 million ethnic Russians were repatriated from other republics. However, the break-up of the Soviet Union -- and especially the partitioning of the Soviet Army -- abruptly reversed the latter flow for all nationalities except Armenians. During 1993-94, the fact that economic reform was proceeding faster in Russia than in most other CIS lands spurred an economically-motivated inflow from all such lands. The war in Chechnya and better economic performance in much of the CIS played a role in reducing this net inflow in 1995 and 1996. Over 1992-96, the Central Asian countries produced the greatest inflows to Russia. A surge in migration to Russia in 1994 came principally from Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. The average age of migrants into and out of Russia is similar to that of the general population, unlike world experience -- and that of the Soviet Union from the 1960s through the 1980s -- where migrants are younger than average. However, as elsewhere, Russia's immigrants and emigrants are more educated than average. After Russians, the largest numbers of migrants to Russia in 1996 were Ukrainians, other groups within Russia (i.e., ethnic groups with their own autonomous republics or administrative units), Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Belarusians, Georgians, Kazaks, and Tajiks. The numerical ranking of those leaving Russia is similar, except that Tajiks figure higher and Belarusians lower. Repatriation of Russians from other republics began in the mid-1970s, at which time repatriation had an economic motivation. Subsequently, outflows large relative to the size of the sending populations were generated by armed conflicts; in Tajikistan and Transcaucasia, all four countries lost about half of their Russians. Russian outmigration from the latter peaked in 1992 at 70,300 and then declined to 23,000 last year. In 1996, the outflows were dominated by republics with large Russian populations, such as Kazakstan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan, rather than trouble spots. As regards migration from Russia beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union, the principal flows in the post- Soviet period have been of Germans returning to Germany and Jews moving to Israel or the United States. The outflow of Jews declined from 61,000 in 1990 to 14,300 in 1996, while that of Germans rose from 33,800 to 64,400 over that period. Russians account for an increasingly large share of such emigration. Research conducted at the Institute for Economic Forecasting in Moscow suggests that there is no relationship between where in Russia immigrants chose to settle and local unemployment or production statistics. There is, however, is a correlation between such migration and the extent of the local private sector. *Michael Wyzan is an economist living in Austria. 23-12-97 Reprinted with permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
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